The Year of Marvels
by CameronZinner
Summary: The sequel to "Under Your Spell"; thirty-four years after the summer that changed his life, Justin Russo reveals his shocking past to his daughter - a past filled with sex, lies, and a family she never knew. Justin/Max and Alex/Mason. Rated M for explicit sexual content and coarse language. Please review!
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Wizards of the Waverly Place or any of the characters. It would be useful if you read _Under Your Spell_ before reading this. Enjoy!

* * *

_**June 2047**_

Mara Kauffman didn't know her past with absolute certainty until her year of marvels, 2047, when everything came to light. The curtain was drawn and there was room to breathe at last. That year it all finally made sense.

It was a phone call that came in the middle of a humid June afternoon which set the cascade of knowing in motion. Five months shy of her 28th birthday, when the sun beamed high above the Napa Valley and the vineyards burst with grapes, the silence of her living room was disturbed.

When she pressed the receiver to her ear, the voice was more than familiar. It was Alex Greyback, her father Justin's only sibling and the sole Russo Wizard, speaking through the static.

"Your Dad's not doing so well," she said coldly, her voice showing no inflection. "He thinks he's going to die but I think he's finally lost it."

"Not doing well?" Mara asked with fingers running nervously through her red hair. Her heart was quick to swell into her throat.

"Mm..." Alex replied. "We took him to the doctor two days ago and they say it's a broken lemur-"

Her voice trailed off abruptly, and Mara heard Uncle Mason correct her promptly in the distance.

"Femur," Alex said. "Broken femur."

"Isn't there anything they can do to speed things up?"

Alex chuckled softly, and her voice assumed its usual snarky-but-affectionate tone.

"Oh _relax_, sweetie. You think falling down some stairs would change a person but he's still the same. I can't get him to stop panicking. He's got us all thinking he only has three months to live. There's no use."

"But he's going to be alright...isn't he?"

"Yeah, yeah he should be okay in a couple of months. He just...Look Mara, let me just cut to the chase here. Your Dad wants you to come out here to Manhattan for a week or two. He hasn't seen you in ages."

That was all it took for Mara to book the tickets: a round trip from California to New York state. It took little convincing from Alex's end.

Mara hadn't been back to New York City in more than two years. Since leaving the metropolis at eighteen to pursue a career in film making, she'd made it a point to visit the only family she knew at least once a year. Circumstances led to a position in art direction, but she was more than content with the life she led. A husband and a home in the rolling California hills was all she could ever ask for.

She'd spent her childhood and teenage years in her Aunt's Upper East Side brownstone home, raised by a single father as the only child. Her mother, she had been told time and time again, died an untimely death by cancer. Mara was told her name was Katherine Azaria, but she'd never known what she looked like; no photographs of her existed.

There was no extended family to speak of either. Her grandparents had died when she was a child and the Greybacks were childless for reasons that were beyond her. Whenever the topic was brought into question, it was a simple shrug of the shoulders from Uncle Mason. "Kid's just aren't for us," he'd say, and they'd leave it at that.

And so when the day of her plane departure arrived eventually, she left home eager to see her family and the life she once knew.

* * *

Mara reached her aunt's brownstone building on East 73rd Street with her suitcases tow. She paid the cab fare and climbed five steps, treading carefully on the sixth because it was still rickety - just as she remembered it.

The bells of the church on Madison Avenue chimed to signal noon and she knew she was home.

Mara rang the door bell once, twice, three times before it swung open and there stood Aunt Alex. The mother she never had, beaming and looking more fabulous than she'd remembered.

Alex Greyback had aged well; there was no debate about that. Her face had its fare share of lines whenever she grinned, but it still kept its taut, youthful look. Dark brown hair fell down to her shoulders, sprinkled with shocks of grey.

Mara had always admired her aunt's eye for fashion. Whether it was the furniture in the house or the designer purse slung around her shoulder, Alex was always a year or two ahead of the curve.

"You're here!" Alex said, and hugged Mara tight like she didn't want her escape. They were the same height, but Mara's heels meant her aunts arms needed to be directed a little higher than usual.

"How was the trip?" she continued, taking the suitcases from her hands.

Mara smiled. "Not that bad, surprisingly. I didn't eat anything on the way here though."

"There's some Chinese leftovers from last night in the fridge," Alex said, leading her down the narrow corridor. She turned left into the study and set the bags haphazardly on the rug.

The study was her father's sanctuary - the room she'd loved the most because of its peculiar smell of old books. The big mahogany desk sat square in the middle, lined with pictures of her mostly, ranging from kindergarten graduation to her wedding day. Like her father, the room was organized and everything was in its place.

In the corner of the desk sat a tattered second edition of his first and only novel, "The Finch's Wife". All 627 pages of it.

Mara had never read it, though she knew it was good. It sat atop every best-seller list for more than year after its release, and was even adapted into an award-winning film she never got around to watching. When asked what it was about, she knew very little; 'a family saga set deep in the forests of upstate New York' was all she could say off the top of her head, but that was it.

Yet despite it's overnight success, Justin had never given up his career. He was a scientist and successful businessman by profession - a co-founder of _Russo, Bergmann & Klein Pharmaceuticals Corporation_ which had seen enough success to give Mara a wealthy Manhattan upbringing.

"Where's Dad?" Mara asked as she followed her aunt closely behind.

"He's in the living room. Come on," Alex replied with a wave of her hand, and left the study.

"What about Uncle Mason?"

"At work. I told him to bring home dinner."

Mara smiled at her aunt's response. In her twenty-eight years, she couldn't remember a single time when Alex cooked.

After passing a winding staircase and more closed doors, the corridor opened up to a wide living room. And in the center was her father in his flannel pajamas, wearing a cast on his right thigh.

Justin's face light up when Mara entered the room. Her father's green eyes twinkled and his mouth switched instantly from a pout to a warm but forlorn smile. He was reclining back on the sofa with his good leg down and his injured one resting on the Ottoman.

"Mara," Justin said, and for a moment Mara was sure he'd start crying.

He was pushing fifty-six and the women still swooned over him (they practically threw themselves at him), yet to Mara's continual surprise he showed no interest in them. All of her friends found him undeniably attractive for an older man, with his sharp features and his salt-and-pepper hair and the muscles of his body which did not leave with age.

Before the fall her father was in perfect shape, save for his left arm. His elbow couldn't fully bend; it was in a permanent state of injury, and had been that way for as long as she could remember. On her father's forearm was a large, faint scar. Mara had seen the same scars on her aunt's abdomen but the two of them passed them off as injuries from a childhood skiing trip.

Mara knew that behind his green eyes was a history that had yet to be revealed to her. Those eyes looked like they had seen so much.

"How's your leg Dad?" Mara said with her cheek pressed to his ear.

"Good, good," her father said to her, holding her closely in his embrace. "You don't know how happy I am to see you. I don't think I'm going to make it."

Alex rolled her eyes and sighed. "Here he goes again. This is what I was talking about, Mara. His leg his fine but he's already digging his grave."

Mara smiled weakly as she stood beside father, with her hand resting on his shoulder.

There was silence as Justin stared at the ground, but when he looked up again his gaze was empty.

"There's so much I need to tell you," he said quietly. "Sit down."

Mara was taken aback by this request and she glanced at her aunt, whose gaze shifted nervously back and forth between them.

"Justin..." Alex said, her eyes as wide as dinner plates.

"What, Alex? You don't think I should tell her?"

Alex threw her head back and groaned, but there was an urgency in her voice that Mara had never heard before.

"Is this why you brought her out here for?" she said, pointing at Mara. "You're going to mess everything up!"

"Mess things up?" Justin said, then pushed himself up with his good arm so that his back was flush against the couch. His bad arm reached for a pillow and placed it on his stomach. "She deserves to know now. She's almost thirty."

"Forget it, Justin," Alex said and swiftly turned to Mara, grabbing her by the elbow. "Come on, sweetie. Let's go for a walk around the block."

But Mara was intrigued. The past was something hidden and never talked about. For the first time in her life, there was an opportunity to unearth matters that seemed to have been deliberately concealed from her.

"Mara, sit down," Justin said firmly this time, and Mara reached back for a chair and followed orders. "I'm going to be completely honest with you right now and you have to trust me with this."

"Mara," he continued, then paused to exhale a shaky breath of air. "There's something I need to tell you. Your mother..." but he stopped again, and stared straight ahead at his sister.

"Don't Justin. Please," Alex said, now in a full state of panic and her voice stirring into a crescendo of sobs. She halted her nervous pacing and sat on the couch beside him, placing a hand on his scar like she was trying to cover it.

"Leave it," she said. "Not today." But Justin continued.

"Your mother..." he said again looking Mara right in the eye. "Never died of cancer."

Mara closed her eyes and dug her finger nails into her palms, a habit she'd had since childhood whenever she was hit with a dizzy spell. She resettled in her chair and leaned in forward.

"She didn't?" Mara said, her query directed more to the floor than to her father.

But Justin didn't hear her and spoke like she never asked the question.

"I'm not your biological father."

The air whooshed out of Mara's lungs when he said the words. Alex buried her face in her palms and wept. Mara had never seen her aunt cry that much.

The room was spinning.

"What...then..." Mara could not string together a coherent sentence, so she held her breath and tried again. "Then who is?"

"I've kept this from you for so many years but I can't anymore, Mara, I just can't. I love you more than anything, Mara, know that. _Please_."

Alex stood and held Mara's head to her stomach, struggling to find balance a midst her sobs.

"But I'm not your father," Justin repeated. "And I was never married to your mother."

The room was getting smaller, like the walls were closing in.

"Do you know who my father is?" Mara managed to ask, and at the sound of that question he began to weep. Justin faintly nodded his head.

"Yes," he said, wiping away his tears with the sleeve of his good arm. "I knew him very, very well."

Alex pulled a tissue from her back pocket and sat beside her brother on the couch, facing her niece who looked strangely calm.

Mara's heart knocked against her ribs but she kept her stone cold face, pulled her chair in closer, and listened.

The two of them explained everything to her, unraveling their troubled history in the din of the living room like a movie, frame by frame, pushing Mara off the edge of familiarity and into a dream.

* * *

**A/N: **Hope you liked the prologue! If I get a good response, I'll continue the story. I know exactly where it's going to go so it's just a matter of me writing it all out. Let me know what you think! By the way, if you read the author's afterward in Under Your Spell then you might already know how things could turn out, but I'm doing it a little differently so stay tuned. And your reviews/feedback mean the world to me!

P.S: There'll be plenty of hot, slashy goodness in upcoming chapters! :) It's M-rated for a reason!


	2. Chapter 1

_**2019**_

January in Williamsburg was a cold and dismal month - when the bitter air gnawed at open flesh, permeating through flimsy apartment walls and the fleece of coats.

Justin Russo had long accepted his maladjustment to the Brooklyn neighborhood. If the means existed he would have left the wretched place in a heartbeat. But to his ever-growing misfortune, there was simply nowhere else to go.

It was a dark and frigid evening. The sky was absent of a sun and the snow showed know signs of ceasing.

Justin trudged through the white mounds with the pulse of a drunken soldier, his breath fogging the air, boots kicking up to knee-level and submerging into the stratum of white again.

With the sleeve of his jacket he wiped the snowflakes off his glasses. The bag slung around his shoulder accumulated with snow as well but it would have been futile to brush it off.

Justin pushed on against the onslaught, confined on either side by graffiti-covered brick walls. The odd neon sign would crop up, casting epileptic reflections of pink and green in the freshly laid snow.

Being a Ph.D nanorobotics student at Columbia University came with its obvious price. Moving closer to campus had been discussed but was deemed impossible, so the hellish commute had to be done: the South Ferry bound number 1 train, then a transfer at 96th St station to the New Lots Ave bound 3 train, followed by a second transfer to the Metropolitan Ave-Middle Village bound M train which ultimately brought him to home. By the end of it he was a hungry and tired pile of skin and bones.

The snow on the sidewalks gradually cleared as he turned right on Hewes St, and home was just in sight.

The apartment was easier to spot as it was one-story taller than its neighbors, though from the front it was still hard to tell them apart. All the buildings on his street were crumbling mid-century behemoths, with bare brick facades and rusting iron fire-escapes. His was no different.

* * *

Justin climbed the last flight of stairs to the third floor and opened the large exit door. At once he was greeted with that familiar wall of dank smells - an awful mixture of Spanish food intermingling with Chinese, a hint of week-old garbage, the occasional tinge of sweat and a subtle undertone of mold.

He walked down the dimly-lit hallway, the threadbare corridor carpet soft under his shoes. The place hadn't been renovated since the seventies and it was evident that the maintenance had done a terrible job of keeping things clean.

Passing the closed doors of each flat was an exercise in memory of its own. Justin knew everyone living on that floor by heart, and thankfully for him they were all decent people.

There was the family of recent immigrants from the Dominican Republic in 301. An old Asian man who kept to himself but never failed to restock the vases in the lobby with fresh flowers lived in 302. In 303 was the couple who, rumor had it, fought every single day for forty-three years.

The man in 304 was an open book: his sex-life was not a secret, and if by chance you ran into him in the elevator he'd go on a spiel about the last woman he'd slept with. The single father of four lived in 305, and across the hall from him was Katherine Azaria, the brunette with the unhealthy crush on him, in 306.

Apartment 307 was vacant, and across from that was 308 - the flat he'd been sharing with Alex, Mason, and his husband Max for five long years.

Justin knocked twice on the door with his frozen knuckle and listened for the shuffling of feet.

"Coming!" he heard Max say. The tap turned off, and a racket of forks and spoons crashing down to the laminate floor followed. Justin drew his lips in a line.

The chain on the door slid open and the locked clicked three reassuring times, and the door swung open. There was Max, smiling, with splotches of flour across his shirt and tomato sauce streaked like blood across his cheek.

"You're home late," Max said, leaning in for a greeting kiss. Justin pecked him on the mouth, their lips touching for microseconds, and maneuvered past him into the kitchen to set his bag down. The place was a mess, like an army of chefs had cooked a banquet for fifty and didn't care to clean up. Pots and pans filled the sink and the counter and floor were both covered in flour.

"What happened here?" Justin said, staring at the culinary carnage with a weak smile on his face. He pulled the coat off his back and Max swiftly took it from him, hanging it up deftly on the coat rack.

"I made pizza," Max said proudly, wiping the flour off his fingers.

Justin chuckled. "_You_ made a pizza?"

"Yeah. It's in the oven right now. Go look."

Justin glanced at the oven, its warm yellow light still on. He squatted in front of it, peering into the glass and saw something which faintly resembled a pizza.

"Is it edible?" Justin asked, then felt a playful kick to his side.

"Oh shut up Justin," Max said, squatting beside him. "Isn't it beautiful? Don't you just wanna...have sex with it?"

Justin grinned out of politeness.

"You know," Max continued, resting his chin on Justin's shoulder. "I heard there's this religion where all you do is fuck pizzas. I saw it on TV yesterday."

"Only you, Max," Justin said, shaking his head with a grimace, and stood up to survey the rest of the damage. "Make sure you clean this all up before Alex gets home or she'll kill you," he continued, and paused to grab a grape from a bowl on the counter. "Where is she anyways?"

"Date night with Mason again," Max said softly, carefully adjusting the dials on the oven.

"Oh."

"They won't be back till midnight so that means we can do it on the couch tonight," Max said, winking his eyes.

Justin did not react. The thought would have been enticing if he had been presented with the opportunity five years earlier. Inevitably, with the passage of time, Justin's ability to answer him wholeheartedly disappeared like the snowflakes on the window.

"I'm pretty tired today," Justin said with a yawn, unbuttoning his shirt in preparation for a hot shower. "Maybe another time."

Justin didn't dare look back to see the defeated look on Max's face. He'd seen it too many times.

* * *

They ate their dinner in silence at the kitchen island, just the two of them, after Justin had showered and Max changed into a fresh set of clothes.

It was hard for Justin, however, to maintain his quiet while scarfing down charred bits of crust. The bubbling glob of mozzarella cheese turned, with just a few extra minutes in the oven, into a distorted and burnt catastrophe no amount of seasoning or scraping could revive.

Justin hadn't said a word, knowing how Max was with constructive criticism. With his teeth clenched and his fingers gripping the edge of the table, Justin swallowed each jagged piece of the pizza like it was his last.

The clock struck ten. As Max showered, Justin retreated to his bedroom in an attempt to salvage what was left of the day. His eyes had threatened to give out during dinner. But when he rested his head against the plushness of his pillow the tiredness was replaced with the yearning to do something, _anything_ but sleep. And he had something in mind.

Justin sat up in bed and rested against the headboard. With his right hand he opened the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a small but thick navy-blue notebook, bounded by a rusting coil, along with his favorite black fountain pen. He set the notebook flat on his lap, opening it to the middle page and skipped through to find where he'd last left off.

Writing was Justin's escape from the monotony of life in Williamsburg, and the pages held the evidence of his solace.

It was Justin's novel, the one he'd been working on for over a year but hadn't quite gotten around to finishing. It remained untitled and unbearably long-winded - but it was his creation, something he could proudly call his own. That was all that mattered.

With the inkling of creativity tingling in his fingers, Justin pressed the pen to the paper and continued:

_Lemuel Werner Finch pushed on in the bright night, steadfast, with the stately sterling lapel pin clutching perilously to his jacket. The wolf cried again. He summoned his bones to wake, startling them out of their dreary slumbers and into the pearly whiteness of-_

"You're still awake?"

The voice cut through the silence of the room, obliterating Justin's concentration. And yet again, he was reminded of the private space he so desperately lacked. There was only two bedrooms in the entire flat - one for Mason and Alex and the the other for him and Max - and a single bathroom. The small outpost of personal space on the right side of the queen-sized bed was all he had to himself.

Justin glanced up and watched as Max approached the bed, shamelessly naked and wiping his damp hair with an old, white towel.

"I thought you were asleep," Max said again, tossing the towel to the corner of the room and climbing onto the mattress, still unclothed.

Max was far more leaner than he had been at eighteen. Now twenty-three, it was clear that puberty had done it's magic; his features more carved out now, his muscles more defined.

Justin was undoubtedly attracted by the sight, but less so than he would have been earlier in their marriage. He managed a semi, but that was all he could do.

The bed rocked like a keeling ship as Max snaked his way to Justin's feet, sending the pen in an inky curve across the page of the notebook. Justin groaned.

"What are you doing?" Max asked, moving into the space between Justin's legs and staring up with the eagerness of a puppy.

"Nothing," Justin muttered, pressing his pen harder to the notebook, trying his best to recollect his train of thought before he was so rudely interrupted. But it was a difficult thing to do, with Max running a finger along the inside of Justin's thigh, his bare butt sticking out into the cold bedroom air - practically calling him.

The hand reached his crotch, slipping beneath the band of his sweatpants, brushing ever so slightly against his cock.

Justin waited for the spark to return, to send him lunging towards Max's naked body like the typically-horny twenty-eight year old he was, but it never came.

So he sat there stone-faced as Max pressed his lips to his manhood, prepared to give in to pleasure with the weak resolve of a hopeless young man.

* * *

**A/N:** I have a very important question for you all - do you want this fic to be more sex-based or do you want to see more non-sexual interactions between characters? Let me know! And please review! :)


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